Stoney

Layne Staley, you are right about every line you wrote.

"The merit of having a heavier metal attitude compared to other bands in the Seattle scene" is the gravest phrase I've ever heard related to grunge. The fact that you appreciate a band for its closeness to metal is thought-provoking. Plus, a record doesn’t "penetrate your veins" just because the guitars are heavy; that may be true for you, but for me, it’s exactly the opposite, for instance. Moreover, Alice in Chains give distorted guitar sounds a completely different meaning and attitude compared to a metal band, so the comparison you make is entirely misplaced, and it’s based solely on a formal analysis.

Simply fantastic record

In terms of metal, Meshuggah only have the heavy guitars. For everything else, they don't fit in at all. Metal, throughout its history, hasn’t expressed even half of what is expressed in this single album. Here we’re talking about a group that has re-invented a way of playing, a grammar, a completely new style, and infused it with meaning, built upon the ruins of a genre that has been dead for more than twenty years, which still stubbornly lives on only in the fantasies of some fanatics. It had been decades since anyone picked up two guitars and gave the "riff" and heavy sound any semantic significance beyond the formal. The way Meshuggah composes is so far removed from that adopted by any other contemporary metal group that I believe they should be classified under a different label, among something decidedly avant-garde. Clearly, today's metalhead, so lost in search of the violence-technical combination that he believes is all that matters in an album, appreciates this group and this work without understanding anything.

Ilcisco, I expected a comment like that from someone. Congratulations on completely missing the point.

GustavoTanz, I'm responding much later but here I am: it doesn’t make sense to compare which shit smells less. Clear enough comparison? If it seems strange to you to associate Subsonica with Burzum (I hadn't actually done that before), personally, I find it much stranger to associate Subsonica with PFM, Demetrio Stratos, or De André. The only difference between Subsonica and Finley is the target audience (and it seems to me that Subsonica’s audience is a much larger slice). Furthermore, the fact that Finley are a bunch of nobodies, aside from some heat-driven girls, is obvious to everyone, and no one treats them as great artists; while Subsonica, on the other hand, do enjoy that recognition. That's what gnaws at me, rewarding people who, just like Finley, say nothing, but pretend to do just enough to fool everyone. If we want to say that Subsonica are masters at throwing smoke in people's eyes, let’s say it, but let's not try to make it seem like a merit.

I have always believed, ever since they released their first album, that the Gallagher brothers are fundamentally musicians lacking in ideas and any minimal instrumental ability. Their entire power lies in the choruses, in the overly singable and droning melodies that become nauseating after just two songs. Furthermore, when you consider that the very melodies that should form the core of their work are, quite frankly, stolen from others (stolen in the sense that similar melodic solutions have been expressively used by others in the past with the same meaning and effect), it turns out that this album and all the others in their career can easily be done without. However, the global music advertising machine is what it is, and so I sadly note how it has managed, despite never having bought one of their CDs and never having watched MTV, to impose their songs on me as the soundtrack of a certain period of my life. I wonder if it’s the same for many of you who write enthusiastically about this album: I wonder if, once again in the history of popular music, the fact that you like this band has really been a choice or a subtle, imperceptible, hammering imposition.

As usual, those who achieve true success are always the least talented of all. Catchy tunes for the carefree masses, melodies so banal they become ridiculous and offensive. They can be fun, bring joy, whatever you like, but to make a band the genius group everyone claims, it takes much more.

Baglioni who attacks television programs like Buona Domenica? But if he’s always on TV, sticking his nose in everywhere, and even participated in that cheesy and gaudy '60s-'70s Italian music revival on Rai with Fabio Fazio (from which obviously sprang a CD that has sold 10 billion copies). What a real piece of work.

Here I wanted to ask an easy question. Yeah, sure, destroy the song format, attack the schemes to innovate, and so on, but what is the limit? What is the line that separates a series of random notes from the genius that breaks the classical mold? Because here (without a shadow of a doubt due to my ignorance) I hear a lot of notes together, and when a piece ends, I can't remember it. And also, one much less easy question. If art is truly so complex that it can only be understood by a few and seems incomprehensible to many, then has it lost its original communicative function, don’t you think? Thank you.